'Shahenshah' Bachchan never ceases to surprise. In three films slated for release in coming months, AB makes hush-hush, special appearances as himself - Amitabh Bachchan the icon.

The first of these movies will be debutant director Sanjay Daima's comedy "Ramji Londonwale" in which southern star R. Madhavan plays as a cook from Bihar who cooks up a storm in London.

Madhavan reveals: "Like 99.9 percent Indians I'm a Bachchan fan in 'Ramji Londonwale'. Throughout the film I keep mentioning his name. He's Ramji's lucky mascot in the film. At the end my character runs into Mr. Bachchan.

"When we wrote in the situation we wondered how to approach the man himself. He agreed so immediately and so graciously that I became his lifelong fan."

The next and most controversial special appearance by AB is in a much talked-about Kannada film "Amrit Dhare".

Explains the film's leading man Dhyaan: "I play a man whose wife is an undying fan of Amitabh Bachchan. In fact, she keeps teasing her husband about 'my first husband' meaning Bachchan saab. When my character gets to know that his wife is dying he somehow arranges for her to meet her idol. That's how Mr. Bachchan came into the picture."

Dhyaan is all praise for AB. "Very honestly, if he hadn't agreed to do 'Amrit Dhare' our film wouldn't have been made. The entire plot hinges on his appearance. He needn't have said 'yes' to a regional film. But he did only because he saw that the plot demanded his presence."

The final AB-as-AB project this monsoon is Mahesh Manjrekar's experimental one-character film "Struggler" where Manjrekar stars as a frustrated Bollywood wannabe who runs into his icon - who else?

Bachchan's appearances are also special because he hasn't charged anything. The Big B brushes off the idea: "These were token appearances where I played myself. It would've been preposterous to expect payment for these roles.

"The filmmakers explained the situations where the three films' protagonists who are my fans needed to come face-to-face with me. I saw no reason to say no to the opportunity to just be myself on screen."